Hello everyone,
just looking for some feedback about this very little piano piece I tried orchestrating, since I am trying to get better with orchestral composing before attempting something bigger.
I attached both piano version and the orchestral one. Thanks to anyone who will give a listen!
P.S. I have no mp3 for the piano version at the moment, but here is a youtube link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP3lKmoO6ME

Hello!
I would like to receive some tips to orchestral composition.
I find myself pretty accomplished in string quartet compositions. I make strong use of counterpoint and I think I do a pretty good job at blending all the four instruments. But whenever I try to compose some Orchestral music I feel I can't tackle it properly. I completely miss the utility of woodwinds ( except for lyrical themes by oboes and clarinets ) and always have a feeling like " what this instrument should play, when it's not the main character? ". Maybe my problem is the huge amount of instruments.
I've analyzed lots of scores ( especially from Mahler's work ), but still can't get to the point of understanding, despite of I can vividly hear, with my inner ear, the music I would like to put on paper.
Any useful exercise you would suggest? Thanks

Well, maybe we should make a difference between the works we come back because of their beauty, and those we go back just for their "intellectual value, and keep in mind that common listeners only go back to pieces because of the first one.

You are right Ken320. ( But obviously I was not meaning talkin from start to finish of the concert...just don't worry too much of keeping things too serious and cold. It's music, not a surgery )
But traditions must go with their era, otherwise they are simply dismissed by the people.
If at the beginning of 20th century people had to conform this formal habits, since this was the only way to experience music, nowadays things are changed. And this is what i was meaning when in the previous post I talked about youtube listening vs live listening. Why people should go to concerts if they can listen to first class performers directly at home?
Against so strong opposites as recordings are, we can't help but coming to terms. Personally I wouldn't mind too much if someone speaks to another person while I am performing, or claps at the end of the first movement, instead of the whole quartet. Better having an imperfect audience ( if we really have to consider these as bad things ), than no one.
This is academicism. Just not for the musicians, but for the listeners...but it's nothing more than a set of rules used to raise the status of music...but now these rules are on of the poisons of "classical" music scene.
Whenever someone argues with me, stating that classical music is boring, I often make him notice that is not the music to be boring, but its setting...and in the end always show them I am right.

Yes you are right.
But keep in mind that music institutions have made nothing to balance the situation. They raised the standards instead.
No talking, no clapping at the end of a movement ( are we kidding? ), no casual dressing, no sneezing ( are we kidding, again? ) , ecc.
The anormous amount of formality that goes with classical music has contributed to kill it, and this is why people need to discover again that music is a pleasure, not a formality. They MUST have fun, feel emotions or whatever they want, when they listen to classical music.
You talked about radio. Just go on youtube and give a look to views each piece, new or old, has....they are tons! This means people love this music, but the problem is that performance standard and formalities killed the interest in live concertos (as listeners and performers ).
Musicians must be able to show people how much valuable live performances are, then a flat recording. And we should make this with two things.
1) We should avoid as much as possible sample libraries. They kill everything...performance, music, job....literally everything. Once we accept releasing our music as tracks, on spotify for example, we lose a big part of our music nature...the goal to be played
2) We should create local communities to enjoy music, even our own music. In order to do this, the music should be comprehensible ( as written in the upper post )
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Technology is also a big deal for every kind of activity...people used to read, create things, paint, play, just think or even ( appearently ) nothing...now they have full pocket "entertainment". And I am not referring to smartphones, I am referring to social media on smartphones.

This is not a topic easy to treat because of the number of "enemies" quality music has today. The bad music, the recording industry, the money, the academicism, the unacceptance of mediocre performances...there is such an enormous number of things that should change...
But I keep thinking that composing for amateurs is a good road...because it would solve a good number of these problems.
1) You are forced to compose in a comprehensible language if you want your committers to enjoy the work. Esthetics would be valued again.
2) You will have the enormous pleasure of hearing your own music....even if bad played. The worst human will always be better than the best midi mockup, I would say.
3) For its nature, composing for amateurs would kill academicism and would accept amateur players.
I understand that this perspective cannot be exciting for every composer, but in one way or another we must create a path for ourselves...and I think minimalists composers ( especially pianists ) have understood this pretty well.

Nothing can be born from itself, as a logical fact. So, no way we can give up tradition...even the most "modernist" are tied to tradition in one way or another...Stating that one comes from no tradition is like stating he has no mother...nonsense.
You touched an interesting point...and I agree with you. In a super fast world, based on impressions and easy things, people are more fascinated by the "immediately reacheable", and music is no exception, from both listeners and players sides.
What can we do? We should learn from history I think. Which was the most flourish age for music composers? It was the romanticism. Why? Because music was played A LOT and by lots of people ( just think to the upright piano invention ). And for sure I am not just referring to Chopin, Schumann and the big ones who composed for pros...I am specially referring to those who composed for amateurs , since music playing was finally out from "aristocracy supremacy " . Regarding this, nowadays things are not that different...there is a big amount of musicians.
"Classical music" composed today is embarassingly difficult to play, and to understand...to quote your point of view, why should one prefer something even more difficult to play and to understand, than Beethoven?
So if this "revolution" has to be, I think it must come from down. To put it easy, I think that composing for amateurs can be a good starting point for this try to revive music...a very strong will to compose lots of music, and also an help for composers to make a living. Imagine having commissions from 4-5 amateur pianists and maybe some small chamber group...All people playing for the sake of playing. I would be extremely excited by the idea.
I am pretty sure that once a similar trend is established, things would be much more easier for us composers to "take back the concert halls".

It seems you misunderstood me.
Never talked about progress for progress sake, but progress for art's sake ( meaning art as description of beauty, if you want ).
I would never treat my audience as idiots. But if I compose something, better keep in mind the way people today " receive" music...2/3 minutes tracks, lyrics and singing, very high volume. If I want to be sincerely appreciated I must keep in mind this thing are lowering the "listener's quality...so I have to deal with them.
I agree with yoy about the desperate ways to create originality and new standards, and I also agree with the uphold prior standards solution...but this is a theoretical idea...now we have to find the correct way to applicate it.
Alma Deutscher fills the concert halls because she is a child prodigy...not because her style. There are tons of composers that use her language but no one has the enormous success she has...the difference obviously is in the age of composers.
If maybe we would come back to those times were new music was composed with the aim of being played, we could have better times. Think about it...before romanticism music was composed because people needed something to play. Maybe playing ( mainly )dead people is what keeps us back.
Just throwing there some ideas for the sake of discussion...no thesis here.

This is an interesting point of view. But i must admit that it still doesn't convince me.
"Going back to.." will always be a bad way with to face current problems. So, just going back to tonality or aping ( think it is a word ) past composer's style will not be the end of the tunnel. Alma Deutscher is certainly a genius in music, but her composing style is dead ( not absolutely denying her skills ). It doesn't match our times...it is not music fr 21th century people.
Just going back to tonality is not the fix to our problem, we must entirely rethink the way we compose, because we have to remember that we have to offer pleasure to our listeners, not ask for efforts to listen to our music ( Stating this just because history has shown that you can propose difficult listenings until a certain point, but moving too away from the commonly accepted is a waste of time ) . And for me, composing 40 minutes symphonies, in old styles that are no longer understood at their full from the audience, is asking too much.
In fact, we have to move forward as never before. The way we compose must be entirely re-elaborated, thinking to be played by living humans ( and not sample libraries ) and to be listened by real humans ( and not just internet surfers ). Only this way music that is actually composed and not " songwritten " can come back to life.
This is a really harsh situation, but if we want music to survive we have to take back our audience, remembering we have to please them in a completely new way.

Your thought is exactly the product of science-over-all approach ( even though you have shown to have no real knowledge of frequency theory, since you ignored the "science" behind the universal concept of overlapping ).
To be honest, I don't really need someone to tell me I need music education, since I have a degree in guitar, and currently studying piano and composition. The difference between my thinking style and yours, is that mine is free from all "scientific" trash. Science is something I use...not something I am used by.
I stand very well and every kind of opposite opinion. But they have to serbe to the discussion...not to the person who presents them...and my impression is that you really argue for yourself, for your convictions and for your " academic knowledge".
Let this thread to us poor ignorant and keep instructing superior minds about academic truths...

to be honest, SSC, I think it has really few things to do with our historical knowledge. We simply created the "musicology" defining it a science, which is pretty much a ridiculous thing. The moderne man has this strong illusion that everything can fall under sciences domain. And if this can be true in a certain sense, it is certainly false by a human perspective...and we are nothing more than humans.
In the past, when not everything was called science ( In italy we have "sciences of literature"...just absurd ) masters knew the history and their craft very well...there was no need of something called science.
Once again I think this is an effect of avant gardes and World wars...men desperatly need certainties...and they thought that "scientifing"everything was the solution...needless to say it just made more confusion.
What I see in modern teachers ( just an example, obviously ) are analysts, more than composers....ready to state how grear was Bach, but with so little compositions on their own...Why? Because science ( analysis in music is what is nearest to science...even if it's not a complete one ) is not a creative force...it's just a method to see, observe and make statements about the world.
This is not the right mind set to compose music.

I pretty much agree with anything you said. But we still have to deal with the tabula-rasa that avant gardes made in pretty much all arts fields. They "destroyed" everything and left pretty much nothing, and This can be seen both as a luck or a catastrophe.
(Exasperated subjectivism is a key that doesn't lock any door anymore. Modern audience knows that whatever kind of modern art is going to see/listen, is gonna be something ugly.)
Now composers ( and artists in general have the power to create everything they want...but at the same time everything sounds so much dull...I can feel that what we really miss is our own language.
Maybe everything we can do is to just pick up the pieces of language that still work, and try to put them together to create a new music "beginning" in human history

@SSC I am not here to prove you anything. As @Quinn said, you seem to be arguing for yourself.
And, Yes...definitely music has a communicative power ! But communicating does not necessarily mean "dialogue with words", but just impressing something. Every sense communcates with the environment. Please, dont't get off topic anymore...
What You said is really interesting, and probably everything about the topic is here. Some kind of music have an higher grade of "kindness" to the listener ( meaning that they are more gentle and willing to quench his desire for understanding the music ), and others are much more harsh.
But from what I see, every language needs to have a minimun familiarity grade, otherwise it becomes a messy accumulation of sounds. Even if the familiarity is only used to disappoint the listener's expectations.
This is why I think many composers are sticking to a new tonal approach. That's a language that has the highest familiarity grade with pretty much any listener ( and porbably it was a response to the strong harshness of avant-gardes ).
This is the first historical periodo where everything is done, but this is pretty strange, since it gives no direction to music. In the past there's always been something to point a drection, and this has been possibile only because of the common practice. What now? Will this be the multi- directionist period?

Your arguments about the temperament is really ridiculous. Why can't hard to discern the GOAL of the tuning system, and its effective application? The temperament was created to pursue a goal, which is the equality of semitones. Stop, nothing more. Nobody here is stating it is the only truth in music. It's just you, so much blindfolded to claim to already know my "criticism" just because you are associating my question to the tonality/atonality thing. Common language, as you stated, is just a cultural fact ( and I won't tell it anymore, since you really don't want to open your mind to me ).
And once again, you are stating an enormous lie with:
" A "common" language is impossible since it would mean everyone had to think the same way and react the same way to things, which isn't the case. "
For the third time in the thread I ask you to face with the alphabet example ----> How boring every dialogue created with the old, same letters. Every man thinks in the same way because they use all the same 26 letters!
I have nothing to admit about that. I've been listening, composing and analyzing atonal, tonal and modal music for several years and I am perfectly fine with each one of this languages. Once again, I am not the tonal/atonal guy you think to be speaking with.
Probably you just don't have the mind set to tackle this kind of thread. So please if you are not interested in the original topic, just stop replying, because that's what I wanted to talk about...not your convictions.